Would you be upset if your parents left you completely out of their will & passed their entire estate to your dc instead?

[SplinterSplit]

This came to mind from reading an aibu this morning. How would you feel if your parents leap-frogged you & passed their entire estate directly to your kids instead? This is my situation & frankly, it hurts. Sadly both my parents are abusive & this is their final act of control. I know I shouldn't be bothered and should be happy for my kids good fortune but I have no other family to inherit from & it's like they just don't give a shit. My kids have already inherited a very large estate & are substantially wealthier than me. I sound green with envy don't I? It's not really about the money, I wish my kids all the luck in the world. It's just the final 'fuck off' from my own parents that hurts.

It’s their money they can do as they please, I would never complain about not receiving money that I hadn’t worked for.

I was hurt when my father did this, I was pleased that my DS had inherited enough to buy a property outright, but it did hurt me to be cut out.
I don't know how my mother has arranged her affairs, I don't see her anymore, my DS does have contact with her. He's an adult with his own family, and is more than capable of dealing with her manipulative ways.
Tbh my mother has made it clear what she thinks of me, so it'll be no surprise if she has left everything to my DS. I'm not bothered now, I've spent years getting to the stage of not caring and it's very liberating to be free.

Tatty, without knowing either case it looks seriously like you’re projecting.

I think in a loving family you would never deprive one generation of their inheritance. It gets tricky if the beneficiary is feckless or has treated the parent badly or there is a very specific need for a grandchild. But typically I would fully expect my children to all make those decisions for filtering on down inheritance themselves. At most I’d leave a little token of £1000 to each grandchild but all the inheritance from our family will be split exactly equally to my children. Not my grandchildren. They will inherit in due course.

@Happyspud, you're right of course, you can only really judge from your own experiences. BUT, it is clear that fourcanaries intends to punish their son for the decision to cut them off and to compound that punishment (and ferment further discord) by giving it to his children. That's clearly not a loving relationship and as this thread shows will leave a lot of unhappiness - which is what I suspect fourcanaries is hoping for.

I have known not a few situations where the grandparents did this because their adult child was an addict or made bad relationship choices, and they didn't want the inheritance pissed away.

You don't really know what's in the will though till it is read after death. This is not only because people can draw up new wills or add codicils, but because people lie ALL THE TIME about the contents of their wills either to manipulate or wind up possible beneficiaries of the wills

My parents were going to do this, till 2 of us siblings pointed out that certain of our children were likely to be of an age to have not worked hard for a living and it'd be cruel to set them up for life at such a young age without my parent's work ethic.
So some will be in trust till they're old enough.

I think anyone would be upset by any action that is meant to hurt you. It may also have been done to try and create bad feelings between you and your children, which is what abusive people like to do. Hopefully your children will help you if you need it, I know I would help my parents or my siblings if I was in a position to and they needed it.

I think it depends why, my grandparents left everything split equally between their children, other than my uncle his share went to his children my cousins. They did this because he had had various addictions, gambling issues, took out loans and finance in their names when they took him in again as an adult when he'd fucked his life up partying yet again, they trusted their other children to ensure the grandchildren were also looked after, he had little to nothing to do with my cousins but we all maintained contact with them and their mum. I don't blame my grandparents for making that decision but he was livid

I would be upset by this. My parents left everything split 50/50 between me and my DB.

I don’t think you have much chance of successfully contesting your parents will unless you are/were financially dependent on them.

It’s kind of what I expect and I’d be happy if it happened, as the alternative is probably that neither I nor my dc get anything.

But then I’m doing ok and my dc haven’t got the inherited wealth that yours have. I think I’d struggle a bit with that.

My parents did doing just that. They discussed it with us many years ago, and I am absolutely fine with it. Everything will be split equally among the grandchildren (and put into trusts for them). I have 3 siblings, but 2 of them are irresponsible with money. My parents wanted to make sure that the grandchildren benefited, so that's how they set it up. My mother (my father passed away years ago) distributed specific items she wanted to go to us siblings a few years ago, as she wanted to make sure certain items went to certain siblings.

Shit, so many people in the same boat.

DSis and I fully expect that anything our parents have will go to their 'real family' of cousins, cousins kids etc. Me, DSis and her son will get nothing as we have, erm, we, oh yes, we erm... well, we just didn't jump high or enthusiastically enough, I presume!

I occasionally consider a speech for the funerals... and then just laugh and acknowledge that I may not be going to either of them anyway!

Sorry, meant to add that if it had been an act of control, then yes it would have upset me. For my parents, it was not like that.

I'd be fine with it. I have NC with my parents anyway, but if they wanted to leave anything to DCs instead that's fine.

It’s their money they can do as they please, I would never complain about not receiving money that I hadn’t worked for

This ^^

I'd have no issue with my children benefitting from others and not me. I'd likely save it for them anyway so no different.

I think in a good family, inheritance can be expected assuming there are any assets left. It’s all part of having children, loving them and dying yourself. I would feel quite pleased to be leaving my precious children something in the absence of myself. Couldn’t imagine a more important thing to do with my money/assets.

I bet plenty of the people withholding inheritance to their children got one themselves and felt they deserved it.

I expect an inheritance if there is any for the record. I also want my parents to spend every penny needed to be comfortable, happy and to enjoy every moment they have on earth. And I also expect that every penny I get is equal to what my sister gets. Neither of us, or our parents, would ever let the other get less.

yes, i'd be pretty upset about this. It's got nothing to do with the money and everything to do with attitude (though if your DC are already financially secure from another inheritance then it is about money).

There are plenty of elderly people in poverty. Of course it;'s good to provide for your DC but it's also nice to know your own twilight years aren't going to be a struggle.

It’s their money they can do as they please, I would never complain about not receiving money that I hadn’t worked for

It’s not about the money though is it? It’s about the OP’s parents doing this to spite her as their final act of nastiness towards her.

I have to say if my grandparents did this (they never would as they’re lovely) then I’d give the money to my mum anyway so their final act of spite isn’t successful.

I actually had a conversation w my parents about this - preface to say I have absolutely no idea what their wills contain. For me (and DH), we have a house (yes, still mortgaged but manageable) and we always thought about our future so always took advantage of making pension contributions (we both were PAYE ) so we will be OK. It’s much harder for the younger generation to get on the property ladder and pensions are no longer available like our (final salary). So I asked them if they were ever considering me in their will, would they please consider passing anything they would’ve thought to give me to give to my children instead.

With that said, I’d greatly appreciate any tangible item of sentimental value.

In your situation I'd be pissed off. In my situation as my kids aren't independently wealthy I have been trying to persuade my parents to bypass me to give my children better opportunities. As they won't I'll just gift the children it themselves assuming there is anything to gift.

Isn't it up to any individual what they do with their money? How is it abusive? I get that it might be a bit upsetting but surely not surprising if there's not a good relationship.

The only thing we were unhappy about was their will specified if they died the money was to be held in trust for each child until they were 18yo. Who in their right mind gives 18yo’s large sums of money?

This would be my objection to it. I wouldn't have wanted someone giving my children large sums of money at 18 years old. ExMIL used to threaten to do it but changed her mind and left it to ExH in the end, which was a pity because by the time she died the children were late 20s-early 30s and could have done with it.

They were always going to do this, accept you will still hoping against hope, that their last hurrah would be a benevolent one. Let the pain be a catalyst for finally accepting them for who they are not who you desperately want them to be.

The pain is the hope and until you decide to let go of that hope, you give them the power to hurt you again and again.

I know someone this is going to happen to.

She doesn't know. She's been in the media quite a bit recently, but is by no means loaded - and never likely to be in her line of work. She thinks her family all support her - and Lord knows on social media they big her up and are proud of her current work. What she doesn't know is that a decision was made about 3/4 years that she would be left nothing because they "don't like her".

I feel awful for her - she thinks her family have her back.